At the Photography Center, I tried to get through all the photos in the museum in the hour that we had before it would close. I found it really difficult though to get through everything because it was hard for my eyes to veer away from almost every single photo. It’s like ever since the night at the museum, my eyes have the urge to find EVERYTHING–every detail– in the art piece.

However, I was still able to find a photo that was mind blowing. The photo I chose is called Happy Street Boy in Pennsylvania Mill Town by Lewis Hine, 1910. The reason I chose this one because this picture stuck out of all the other pictures in the exhibit. In the “Child Labor” section of the exhibit, all the photos had children all tattered and torn, all looking sad and some of them with major injuries. The picture I chose, though, had one kid who was SMILING!!!! As most of us already know, it’s not custom to smile when taking a picture back then. It just didn’t feel natural to smile for a photo. But the kid in the picture was smiling, which really means that he was happy!

Moreover, the kid was happy even though he was a low class child who, just like the kids in the other photos, worked at the factories. He had a lost tooth, lost buttons on his dirty shirt and soot all over his face. He could have lost a limb in the factory that day!! But he just keeps on smiling.

This child can teach all of us a lesson: Keep calm and smile at whatever life throws at you!!!     🙂

I have plenty of past experiences in museums. I went to the MET, the Natural History Museum and many science museums (because who doesn’t love playing around with the interactive games there). I love museums. Its a place for fun and education. So when I first heard that the Macaulay class of ’17 will go and visit the Brooklyn Museum, I thought that it would be a great experience to have the whole museum to ourselves and to hang out with friends. But I never really experienced a museum the way I did on that Tuesday, September 3rd.

The instructions were to record ourselves discussing the details and the mysteries that are behind the art pieces that we were looking at. At first I was a little skeptical about recording myself talking about what is and isn’t of the art piece- it would be boring and difficult. I was just holding on to the recorder waiting for my group to decide which painting/sculpture to choose. As we roamed around, we stopped at an Egyptian carving and one of my group members already started discussing the details of the huge piece of stone. And then, another group member had a comment about what the other guy said and he wanted to add in some of his input. And I thought, this is exactly what we need to do, and its coming out naturally! So I clicked the button on the recorder without the group realizing and after two minutes- just like that- we had gold!

Once we became “pros” at this, the second and third one was a piece of cake. Once my group was done recording, we continued to roam around the museum a little longer. As I was aimlessly scanning all the paintings on the walls, I realized that I was paying more attention to the details in the paintings. How the characters in the painting were facing a certain direction, or how the wrinkles on a character makes him look weak. This experience helped me both achieve a keener eye and meet new people.

Adiell Melamed